Mining and large scale excavating operations may require fleets of machines to transport excavated material (e.g., dirt, rocks, gravel, etc.) from an area of excavation to a secondary location. For such an operation to be productive and profitable, the fleet of machines must be efficiently operated. One way to efficiently operate a fleet of machines is to reduce the number of operators required to operate the fleet by, for example, operating machines in a remote mode and/or an autonomous mode.
A system for operating a machine in an autonomous mode is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,448,479 (the '479 patent), issued to Kemner et al. The '479 patent discloses a system and method for remotely controlling an autonomous mobile vehicle using a tele-panel to interrupt autonomous operation. In tele-operation, an operator controls the vehicle using a tele-panel (remote control). The transition periods between autonomous, manual, and tele-operation (remote control) are strictly controlled for safety reasons. When the vehicle receives commands from the tele-panel, the vehicle ceases autonomous operation and enters a tele-ready mode. Once in a tele-ready mode, the vehicle will not respond to commands from other tele-panels and cannot resume autonomous operations.
Although the '479 patent may increase the flexibility of available operational modes for a fleet of machines by enabling manual, autonomous, and remote control modes, the '479 patent may still be less than optimal. In particular, the remote mode (tele-operation mode) disclosed in the '479 patent can only be entered from the autonomous mode. As a result, the system and method of the '479 patent may require a fleet manager and other controls used to operate multiple machines in autonomous mode even if certain applications only call for the ability to remotely control a single machine.
The system and method of the present disclosure solves one or more problems set forth above and/or other problems in the art.